Descartes: A Biography

P: PHU
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Death in Sweden 

Provinces, nor remove from them your candlestick.’He remembered

his friends, such as Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘to whom he had always

given his sincere love and affection and who had honoured him with her

saintly friendship’, and to whom he bequeathed a copy of the Bible in

unpointed Hebrew.The Calvinist theologian was attended by a Roman

Catholic doctor, Balthasar van der Cruyce (or de la Croix), despite the

difference in religious allegiance between patient and physician, and he

died in peace, prayerfully, onJanuary.

Descartes’ death one year earlier was reported by his friends and fol-

lowers as if it conformed to the pattern of Rivet’s Christian departure in

the company of trusted friends. Chanut had contracted a flu-like infection

about the middle of January, after taking a walk with Descartes.Tw o

weeks later, Descartes – who was still living in Chanut’s house – fell vic-

tim to the same infection, just as his host was recovering.The queen’s

primary physician, a Frenchman named M. du Ryer, was temporarily

out of the city, and she sent her next in line, a Dutch Calvinist named

Mr. Wuelles, to offer Descartes medical assistance. The unco-operative

patient had never accepted blood-letting as an appropriate remedy for

infections, as if a fever would depart by flowing out of the body as blood

was released. In contrast with Chanut, who had accepted the physician’s

therapy and recovered (though hardly as a result of the physician’s inter-

vention), Descartes declined initially to allow his arm to be bled. He hoped

to recover naturally. If not, he was resigned to face death.

Baillet presents Descartes’ death as the characteristic passage to the

other world of a fervent and pious Catholic. The Feast of the Purification

occurs in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar onFebruary. Baillet

describes Descartes as having his confession heard and receiving commu-

nion on that day, almost in anticipation of his impending illness. Through-

out the following days, the patient remained in bed with a high fever.

Baillet reports implausibly that, during his final days, ‘all his thoughts were

directed only to piety, and they were concerned only with the greatness of

God and the misery of mankind.’By the eighth day of the fever, the dying

philosopher acceded to the entreaties of his friends, and finally allowed

the physician to bleed him twice. Those in attendance said the prayers for

the dying, and Descartes dictated a letter for his brothers. Among other

things, he asked them to provide financial support for his nurse, ‘whom

he had always cared for during his life’ (v.). When asked for consent to

be given the annointing of the dying, Descartes is reported to have opened